


You Never Forget

by JK Ashavah (ashavah)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-16
Updated: 2009-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashavah/pseuds/JK%20Ashavah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remembrance Sunday, Cardiff. As Gwen's thoughts turn to Tommy Brockless, Ianto's turn to Jack Harkness and Jack's turn to the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Never Forget

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks must go to my sister, whose throwaway comment to me sparked what had been a simple scene idea into something more complicated, and who let me bounce plot ideas off her, and commented on my drafts.  
>  **Disclaimer:** I, of course, don't own any of the characters or situations of Torchwood, which belong to Russell T. Davies and the BBC.

Some people say there’s no rest for the wicked. Gwen Cooper knows that there’s no rest for Torchwood. As the door slides across with its familiar, clanking creak, she trots up into the Hub, clutching the takeaway coffee cup that will keep her going until Ianto brews her first cup of coffee for the day.

“Sorry I’m late, Jack,” she calls out, pulling her bag off her shoulder as she runs down the steps and strides across to her workstation. She pulls out a paper bag and tosses it onto her desk. It contains the danish that’s her breakfast this morning. Normally, she would have had a breakfast at home with Rhys. Maybe even breakfast in bed, since it’s Sunday. But yesterday was a busy day; there’s no reliability to the concept of “weekends” at Torchwood. Some mornings, it’s hard to get out of bed. Especially weekends, when she wakes up with Rhys beside her, and he’s got all morning to spend with her. For all Jack says she needs to hold her life together, to keep in touch with her humanity, sometimes it’s awfully hard. Especially now, when they’re all still reeling from their own personal losses and trying to piece the city back together at the same time. 

Some days, she just doesn’t want to face it. She’d rather hide under the covers with Rhys. But every day, she makes herself get out of bed and come here. Because she has a duty, to protect Cardiff. To help rebuild it. And because she and Jack and Ianto all need each other so desperately right now. The city – the planet – is getting back on its feet after everything that’s happened. Even the Torchwood team are adjusting to only being three. It’s not so painful to look at one of Tosh’s programs anymore. Or to descend into the autopsy room that used to be Owen’s domain. 

But alien activity doesn’t wait for mere matters like restoring the planet after it’s been transported across the universe by Daleks. Not to mention that the Rift was opened and used for things it never had been before – a tow-rope, a transmitter. The Rift is still settling back down, still throwing things through at a higher rate than normal. It doesn’t stop because Torchwood are busy. It certainly doesn’t stop for grief, and two team members down, they’re all run ragged. Which is why she’s here on a Sunday, to tie up loose ends and circulate a cover story, smooth over ruffled feathers in the police force, and try to hide the fact that a whole gang of blowfish have been on a petty crime spree all around the city.

She flops down in her chair, and swivels to face Jack’s office, waiting for a reprimand. But he’s not striding through the door, quirking an eyebrow and preparing innuendo about her lateness. There’s no sound of firm footstep on grating, or sound of doors opening. In fact, it’s remarkably quiet. There’s the omnipresent gentle hum of machinery and computers, but no human sound. Somewhere up above her, there’s a rustling sound as Myfanwy settles on something up in the ceiling.

“Jack?”

A sense of uneasiness starts to gnaw at the pit of her stomach. There’s nothing to worry about, she tells herself. That doesn’t stop her hand going to her gun as she paces around the Hub, looking to see no-one’s half-buried under something fiddling with equipment, checking Jack’s office, climbing the stairs to the boardroom. She steps back out into the main office, and starts flicking through the security footage from around the Hub.

“Jack? Ianto?”

She spins at the sound of footsteps, and heaves a sigh of relief when she sees Ianto.

He raises his eyebrows as she spins, and smiles as she sighs.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I’ve been down in the archives. Have you been here long?”

She shakes her head. “No. I guess I just got a little jumpy. I’m still not quite used to finding it quiet when I come in here. Where’s Jack?”

“Not here.” Ianto shrugs. Gwen waits, expecting him to say more, but he doesn’t.

“Well, at least I’m not the last one to work this morning. I thought he was the one who said we had to get all this done today,” she says.

Ianto goes over to the computer that used to be Tosh’s and shrugs out of his suit jacket. He drapes it over the back of a chair, and turns his attention to the computer, fingers tapping across the keyboard. “So, we get it done.”

Gwen stares at him for a moment. He looks across at her.

“Have you got a better suggestion?”

Her shoulders slump. “No, I guess not.”

“We’ve got work to do, then.”

The Hub is filled again with the sound of industrious tapping, as Ianto alters records and security footage, rewriting the events of the past few days to complete the process of obliterating the blowfish from all record.

Gwen grabs a sheaf of paperwork and flops down in her chair, leafing through the papers. She pulls open her desk drawer and reaches for her notebook, the one in which she’s written down her list of people she needs to contact to get this sorted out. She flicks it open and picks up the phone. She’s already dialling the first number as she rifles through her drawer for a pen.

“Good morning,” she says. “My name’s Gwen Cooper. I’m calling from Torchwood?” Her fingers brush against something papery and unfamiliar in her drawer. She frowns and her fingers close around it.

“Mhmm. Could I speak with him please?” There’s a moment of silence. “Oh, hello again, it’s Gwen Cooper from Torchwood. Yes, that’s right. About those robberies, we’ve got it sorted. Yes, the suspects have been apprehended. Thank you so much for all your help. Yes, we’ll take it from here. No, I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say. But it’s our responsibility now. Thank you again.”

She hangs up, and pulls her hand out of the drawer. As she opens her fingers, she frowns for a moment, then realises what is sitting there in her palm. It’s a red paper poppy, one she bought a few days ago on a whim and left in her desk. A token of remembrance for Tommy Brockless. And for Tosh. After all, there aren’t many people in Britain who can say they met a soldier from the First World War. He was a hero, just like Tosh said. He saved the world, knowing that he was going back into the hell he’d come from. He’d known he was going back to the trenches, but he’d chosen to help them, to mend time when it shattered. And that heroism had gone unrecognised. No-one knew what he’d done. No-one except her and Jack and Ianto.

Ianto looks across at her, eyebrows raised in a silent question.

“It’s Remembrance Sunday,” she says, tears welling in her eyes even as she smiles. “I was just ... thinking about Tommy. About what he did, and how no-one will ever know. I don’t know, I never ...” Her voice trails off, and she shrugs. “I guess it just all seems a bit more real now, having met Tommy. Like now – we have someone to remember.”

Ianto looks back at his screen. He keeps typing, and his brow slowly furrows, a small frown growing deeper. The tap-tap-tapping grows faster, louder, and ends with a very final tap on the “enter” key. He stops, staring at the computer screen.

“Ianto?”

“I’ve got to go,” he says. He reaches across to pluck his suit jacket from the chair. Gwen watches him in disbelief as he puts it on. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Jack’s run off somewhere, now Ianto’s going. As he straightens up his jacket, she notices a splash of red on his lapel; he’s already got a poppy on his jacket.

“But we’ve got work to do! It’ll take us ages to get through it all without Jack!” 

“I’ve done a lot already, before you got here. But I ...” He shakes his head. “I think there’s somewhere I should be. I’m sorry, Gwen. I’ll be back, I promise. But ... Jack needs me.”

And with that, he strides across to the door and is gone.

***

It’s not a long drive to Cathays Park, only about ten minutes, but getting there isn’t a problem; Ianto’s fairly sure the parking will be the hassle. And he’s perfectly correct in that assumption. By the time he finds somewhere to park, it’s well past 11. The ceremony will be as good as over by the time he gets there. He just hopes he’s made the right assumption where to go. And he hopes he’s not too late to find Jack.

Walking briskly, he manages to make it to the memorial before the ceremony’s over. There’s a huge crowd gathered in Alexandra Gardens, spread out across the grass, radiating out from a central point, the tall memorial structure, all white pillars and neo-classical architecture. The strains of The Land Of My Fathers are filling the park, and the air is swelling with the sound of voices. Some of the crowd have tears in their eyes. But he doesn’t pause to savour the moment.

Here, looking for a man in an RAF greatcoat is not as easy as it would be in any other crowd. But Jack’s not really a crowd person, so Ianto starts looking around the perimeter, wandering a wide circle across the grass. And then he sees that unmistakable silhouette, dim in the shadows beneath a tree. Jack’s standing there at attention, shoulders squared and head held high, gazing across the crowd. He’s silent, not joining the song as the final lines die away.

In the quiet that follows, Ianto walks up beside him. He doesn’t say anything. He wouldn’t even know where to start, but when his right hand brushes Jack’s left, Ianto entwines his fingers in Jack’s. He isn’t sure at first, how Jack will take him coming here. If he didn’t tell Ianto he was coming here, chances are, it was because he wanted to be alone. But Jack’s only response to his arrival is to squeeze his lover’s hand and keep watching the crowd, as the ceremony comes to an end and the march to City Hall begins. Much of the crowd follows it. The rest scatters, some of its members turning to leave, others making their way towards the memorial to pay their own private respects, and some wandering the gardens. But Jack still doesn’t move, still doesn’t say anything.

Ianto turns his head, studying Jack’s face. Jack’s eyes, those eyes so much older than his face, are distant. He’s staring out across the scene in front of them, but he’s not taking it in. There are faint furrows on his brow, and as Ianto watches, he closes his eyes, the faint expression of pain almost beautiful. He opens his eyes again and looks across at Ianto. His large, warm hand moves and, almost absently, his thumb begins to trace the lines of his companion’s palm.

A smile appears briefly on his face, and all the solemnity of the moment before is gone.

“November 11, 1918. Ninety years ago.” He shakes his head. “So long ago. We were in a little place called Le Cateau, in northern France.” One corner of his mouth twitches further upwards, giving his expression a wry, almost sarcastic edge. “Everywhere back in England erupted into celebration. But there, in the front lines, it was more of a shock than anything. After four years of hell, they were all a little afraid to admit it was true. No-one could really believe it was all over. Well,” he adds, with a huff of breath that could nearly be a laugh, “no-one except me.” A grin flashes across his face as he says that, but it’s gone almost as quickly as it came.

He lapses into silence again. Most of the crowd has dissipated by now, except for a few old men, some in wheelchairs, some hunched over walking-sticks, and the companions, children or grandchildren, who steady their arms or steer their chairs. Brightly polished medals gleam on the breasts of the old men’s jackets, the ribbons vivid against sombre blacks and navies. As Ianto follows Jack’s gaze out across the park, he sees a man hobble up to the colonnade of the memorial, supported on one side by a walking stick and on the other by a blonde teenager. She hands him the vivid red flower she’s holding, and he slowly bends down and places it on the memorial.

“For a lot of them,“ Jack says, his voice quiet, “it just reminded them of all the friends that didn’t live to see that day.”

He falls silent, and after a while, Ianto begins to think he’s not going to say anything else. He desperately wants Jack to say more, to make that implicit request for help or comfort that comes in sharing grief. But he knows it will do no good to push. If he wants to, Jack will talk. If he doesn’t, no amount of prodding will make him share. Ianto would like to think that if he truly _needs_ to, Jack will talk to him, but experience tells him that might not be the case. He just hopes that Jack trusts him enough, needs him enough, to share what he’s thinking. 

There’s only a handful of men alive in the whole world who know first-hand what it was like. But the fact that Ianto can’t understand doesn’t stop him wanting to help. If anything, it makes him want it more. There’s so much about Jack that he can’t understand. But he’s desperate to try. Jack knows so much about Ianto, but is so reticent about himself. Even when he does open up, there are so many depths that Ianto despairs of ever coming to really understand him. 150 years of experience and memory, on top of the nearly 2000 years he was condemned to die and revive over and over under the city mean that no matter how much Ianto knows, there will always be more to understand about the enigma that is Jack Harkness.

“God, Ianto,” Jack says, letting out a shuddering breath. “I’ve seen terrible things. Wars all through time and space. The most horrible things you can imagine: Daleks, countless alien invasions, genocide, the end of the world. All that death and destruction.” 

He shakes his head. “But sometimes I think the worst was right here on Earth. Because we do it all to each other, to our own kind. The first day of the Battle of the Somme, twenty thousand British soldiers died.” His voice quavers, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there’s just a little too much moisture sparkling in them.

“They were so young, Ianto. So full of life, with so much ahead of them. And no matter what I did, how many times I died, it was all just futile –“ there’s a harsh edge to his voice now “- futile in the face of all that industrialised slaughter. They just got mown down or blown up. And there was nothing I could do.

“And then, when they couldn’t take any more, they were called cowards or branded insane. Sent to convalesce in ... in hospitals that just had no idea how to look after them.” There’s a deep bitterness in his voice, maybe even anger. “Condemned to asylums if they didn’t get any better. Or worse, told they were cowards. The army shot hundreds of men for cowardice or desertion, men broken by the terrible things they’d seen. They just couldn’t stand it any more, and they were killed.” What could be a half-choked sob catches in his throat.

Ianto disentangles his hand from Jack’s and slips his arm around the other man’s waist under his coat, his palm coming to rest on Jack’s hip. He feels he should say something, but the words just won’t come. What is there to say, after all? There’s nothing that can make what Jack’s talking about any less horrible.

“That’s what they did to Tommy.” A shuddering sigh escapes him. Ianto had guessed at the time how much Jack had hated sending Tommy back there; though he’d said very little about it, he’d been quiet and brooding afterwards; he'd needed comfort. “And James,” he adds, his voice so soft Ianto barely hears it.

Ianto frowns and looks up at Jack. He waits for a few moments to see if Jack is going to elaborate. 

“Who’s James?” he asks, stepping to face Jack, his hand slipping out from under the greatcoat. He looks up into Jack’s face; that little frown is there again, the one Jack wears when he’s studiously not showing any emotion.

Jack shoves his hands into his pockets and stares out across the parkland towards City Hall. He doesn’t answer the question.

Eventually, he turns back to Ianto and holds out a hand.

“Come on. Let me buy you a drink.”

***

_Clink, clink_. Jack sets two drinks down on the table. He gently pushes the bottle of beer across the table to Ianto. The other drink is for him. In a change from his usual habit of just drinking water, it’s Scotch. He pulls out the chair opposite Ianto’s and sits. Ianto takes a sip of beer. He’s used to not getting answers to questions. But it’s still a disappointment. Their conversation was hardly enjoyable, but Ianto can’t help feeling it was a conversation Jack needed to be having. He’d thought Jack appreciated having him there, having someone to listen without making any demands. Someone just to be there. He knows how much Jack hurts sometimes. And how determined he is not to let it show.

Jack picks up the glass of Scotch, and swirls the liquid around in the glass. He watches the amber fluid intently, eyes tracking its movement as it sloshes around. There’s the faintest hint of a smile on his lips, but his eyes are sad.

“Captain James Watts, 11th Battalion, City of London Regiment.” It’s said in an approximation of that cool, clinical voice he uses when he’s rattling off the details of a victim of an alien attack, or the characteristics of a new species. But his voice isn’t quite steady.

“Decorated and promoted for bravery at the Somme, well-regarded as a leader by his men, admitted to hospital for shell-shock after the Battle of Passchendaele, but recovered enough to return to the lines.” Jack’s voice slows, becomes less like he’s rattling off a list, and his expression darkens. “Turned and ran in the face of the German onslaught at St Quentin.” He leans forward, arms folded on the table. There’s cold anger in his final sentence. “Shot for cowardice.”

Ianto is quiet for a moment, looking down at the stains caused by years of wet glasses and bottles on the wooden tabletop. So that’s what it was that affected Jack so much about Tommy Brockless, why Jack was so angry at what happened to him. Because he knew someone the same thing happened to. But there’s more than Jack’s saying, and Ianto thinks he’s good enough at reading between the lines to know what it is. But he’s not entirely sure. There’s one more answer he needs, and he doesn’t know if he’s going to get it. He looks up into Jack’s eyes.

“Did you love him?”

Ianto’s a little startled when, rather than dissembling, or ignoring the question, Jack looks him straight in the eyes and gives him a straight answer.

“Yes.” His voice is husky.

He closes his eyes for a long moment, and sighs.

“He wasn’t a coward, Ianto,” he says in a low voice. “He was one of the bravest men I’ve known. Selfless in battle. Fiercely protective of his company.” The corners of Jack’s mouth twitch upwards and as he leans back in his chair, he lets out a little laugh. “And he always seemed to know where to find a bottle of Scotch.” He raises the glass to Ianto and takes a sip in a silent toast.

“But Passchendaele was too much.” There’s an odd inflection to the way Jack says “Passchendaele”, almost as if the word he was really thinking was “hell”. He shakes his head. “He watched his men mired in mud, mown down by German machine guns, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.” Jack’s voice is cold. “It destroyed him.” 

Ianto stares back down at the table, disquieted, not just by the thought of the horror of seeing people under your command wiped out like that – but also of what it must have been like for Jack to see that happen to someone he loved. He’s not speaking with that fake detachment any more. Even after all these years, there’s pain in his voice.

“Back then,” Jack continues, his voice quiet but bitter, “no-one understood about post-traumatic stress. They didn’t know what to do with all those thousands of men they had on their hands, constantly reliving battles, screaming in the night, lost in their own worlds of horror. They sent them back to England, but they had no idea how to treat them.” He shakes his head, a disbelieving expression on his face. “They thought shell shock was a physical illness caused by concussion from shell explosions. So ... if their symptoms got better with rest and time away from the front, they got sent back to the front.”

He lapses into silence. Ianto reaches out across the table and squeezes Jack’s hand. He doesn’t say anything, not wanting to disturb Jack’s thought processes. It’s so rare for Jack to share any of his history, especially the stories of people he’s loved. Sure, he’s always got a story for any situation, but when it comes to people he truly cared about, he’s silent. Maybe he wants to keep those memories close to him. Maybe he just doesn’t want to think about the people he's lost.

“They sent him back, of course. He was strong enough that he recovered enough for that.” Jack’s lip curls in disgust. “But he wasn’t better. How could he be?” Jack drains his glass. “The day the Germans attacked at St Quentin, we’d been shelled for hours, and when they attacked the trenches, he just couldn’t handle it. He tried. He tried to face his demons and stand his ground. But he couldn’t. He froze and threw down his gun. And ran.” Jack’s face twists, whether in disgust or sudden pain Ianto can’t tell.

“I knew then what they would do to him. I tried to save him, but there was nothing I could do. There were just too many witnesses, too much evidence against him. And the court martial thought he should be made an example of.” Jack’s face is furious, and he as good as spits the last words. “A company commander who showed cowardice to his men. They destroyed him, Ianto. And then they told him he was a coward and killed him for it.”

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Ianto says. What more is there to say? He reaches out and grabs one of Jack’s hands. Where words can’t do what needs to be done, sometimes a reassuring touch can. It’s a power Jack understands.

The simple touch seems to snap Jack out of his fury. He lets out a long, slow breath and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, his face is calm. He leans forward, takes Ianto’s hands in his, and presses them to his lips.

“It was a long time ago now,” he says, as though that somehow makes things better. His voice is steady again, but not completely free of emotion. “Ninety years ago. Two thousand for me.” His eyes flick up to the clock above the window. “Come on. We’ve been gone long enough. We should get back to work before Gwen winds up doing everything herself.”

***

Gwen’s long since gone home, after giving Jack a tongue-lashing for insisting they work today and then vanishing for hours. He didn’t make any excuses for himself, and if he didn’t, Ianto certainly wasn’t going to. Jack told her she could have the next day off, now that the case is tied up.

Gwen probably wouldn’t understand why Jack thought he had to be alone. But Ianto can. Jack doesn’t like opening up, and it drives Gwen mad. But if Jack wanted some quiet contemplation of something that his friends can’t really understand, Ianto can’t blame him for slipping away unnoticed. In the end, they’ve all done their share of work today. She didn’t get burdened with any more than Ianto and Jack did; Jack made sure of that by sending her home not long after he and Ianto got back. It wasn’t a difficult clean-up job, really; it was just a lot of work for three people.

Ianto slides the box with the artefacts confiscated from the blowfish gang into the spot awaiting them in the archive, and trots back up the stairs and across the Hub to Jack’s office. The door is closed, so he raps firmly on it.

Jack looks up from his desk.

“Come on in, Ianto,” he says, standing up and walking across to meet him. “Everything squared away?”

“Everything’s archived, all the paperwork’s done, the police are pacified. The blowfish were never here. All in all, I’d say a good day’s work.”

“You did good work today, Ianto. Thank you.” He smiles and turns to walk back to his desk, but he pauses in mid-step, contemplating for a moment before turning back to Ianto. “And ... thank you for earlier. You probably didn’t want to hear all that.”

Ianto raises his eyebrows. “I don’t mind. Really. You never talk about the people you loved.” 

“It’s not exactly the sort of thing most people want to hear about.”

Ianto shrugs. If he's honest with himself, it was good to get a glimpse into a part of Jack’s past that meant so much to him. Usually all he hears about people from Jack’s past is comic stories which tell him very little in reality. James’ fate was horrible, but Ianto’s not sorry to have heard it, for all that.

“I came to terms with the war a long time ago. Like I said, I’ve seen plenty of horrible things in my time. I’m good at coping. But that doesn’t mean I want to lock away those memories for good.” He smiles. “So,” he says, turning and walking back to his desk, “once a year, I dust off the old memories and pay tribute to them. Drink a glass of Scotch in memory of James. And remember what a hell humans can make for each other. Because it’s important to remember that, amongst all the other things we see.”

Ianto perches on the edge of Jack’s desk, and his eyes flick over to a wooden box lying open on it. Following his gaze, Jack pushes the box over towards him. It’s wartime memorabilia; a few badges, some pieces of paperwork, and a collection of medals, far more than you’d get from one war. Ianto’s not good on medals, but he knows enough to tell that there’s some fairly impressive bravery awards in there; there’s a couple with white and purple ribbons, and he seems to remember that they’re fairly major gallantry awards. He pulls out a gold medal with a rainbow-striped ribbon; he’s seen a few of them before, but this one has a bronze oakleaf pinned to it. He runs his finger over the old ribbon. For something ninety years old, it’s in good condition.

Jack’s watching him, and he reaches out and gently takes the medal from Ianto. “Victory Medal, with MID.” He lets out a little half-laugh. “It’s easy enough to be brave in battle when you don’t need to worry about dying.”

Jack pushes a piece of paper across the desk to Ianto; he picks it up, and sees that it’s an old black-and-white photograph. A small group of men, officers by the look of the insignia on their sleeves, sit on crates in the dirt, the landscape around them torn up by artillery fire. They’re in British army uniforms; their jackets look a little like the one Tommy was wearing when they sent him back to 1918, though the cut's better, much more flattering. Jack’s on the left, his hair styled a little differently, but his face the same as today, all these years later. He’s grinning, looking straight at the camera. There’s a bottle on the ground at his feet, and the mug in his hand is raised in a toast to the camera. 

“You look better in an Air Force uniform,” Ianto quips, looking up from the Jack in the photograph to the Jack sitting in front of him.

“Well, no-one ever accused the Army of having good fashion sense,” Jack says, affecting indignation for a brief moment before his face breaks into a grin. He nods towards the photo and Ianto resumes his study.

On Jack’s right in the photograph sits a man with dark curls, maybe thirty years old if Ianto had to guess. There’s a dark slash by one eye, a scar or a healing wound, and a few more lines than there should be in a face that age, the hallmarks of war. A mug sits on the ground by his feet. Smoke drifts up from a cigarette held between two fingers of his left hand, and he’s looking at Jack and laughing. There’s something in his expression as he gazes at Jack, a deep affection that’s maybe only visible because Ianto’s looking for it. But it’s enough that he doesn’t need to ask which of the men is James Watts.

“I never got to have a relationship with James – hell, that was still a felony then -” Jack pulls a face, the one he uses when he’s complaining about people’s tendency to categorise. “But I loved him. Deeply.” He looks up at Ianto, resting one hand briefly on Ianto’s suit-clad thigh. “And in the end, you never forget the people you’ve loved, even when you’ve lived as long as I have.”

He gently takes the photograph from Ianto’s fingers. He places it in the box, rearranges a few things, and shuts the lid. He smiles as he pushes the box aside.

“They become a part of who you are, Ianto,” he says, reaching across and running a finger gently down the side of Ianto’s face. He pushes back his chair and moves to sit on the edge of the desk next to the younger man. Studying Jack’s face, Ianto knows that there’s a lot going on in his mind that’s going unsaid. But that’s all right; he’s used to it, and he gets the feeling that Jack won’t leave the emotions unexpressed.

“Thank you,” Jack whispers, his fingers tracing the line of Ianto’s jaw. He doesn’t say anything else; when he presses his lips to Ianto’s, his kiss says the things his words don’t. And then, there’s not really much more to say.


End file.
